So another moderator from MorganSMP that I greatly admire, Omnixius, decided to start his own server back in April. As much as we both love Morgan’s and we dedicated a lot of time and effort into it, things had changed. But drama aside, I thought this was a great chance to get out from under some frustration and join him in a fun project.

Well the first thing I did was build a pagoda right next to spawn. And promptly have a super creeper blow it up.

Then I went and found a village in the desert where I could rebuild my Egyptian empire.

Stuff happened, and eventually Omni just gave me my own world to build my Egyptian monstrosity in. Thus, Abydos was born. And has taken over my life.

There are no words to adequately describe my frustration with this beast. I was going to place a causeway and temple from Khufu, but then I made this lovely road leading to the north bridge, and that intersected the path the causeway would take anyway. So now I’m stuck with the headless beast.

Sculpting in dirt is much easier than abusing a pick to change and replace and change and replace sandstone, or the other valuable things that will cover the dirt frame. It will be fully colored, or at least that is my plan, as it might have looked in its heyday. This is not a long dead ruin of Egypt, oh no, this is an alive and vibrant area, untouched by time and looters.

The scale bothers me though. The beast might end up bigger just to get the detail on the face that I want, but I don’t have a lot of room to work with. I left myself a little space though, so hopefully any needed increase won’t be too much.

Though I tried to slope the top of this pyramid in something of an older pyramid fashion, it just didn’t look right. So I took off the top twenty layers and rebuilt it. The temple remains unfinished, but at least I finally got the road and mortuary temples built. This pyramid just seems to be plagued with problems.

Also, I was distracted trying to make a fancy well type structure, which turned into something more like a domed, miniature temple.

The pyramid of Khafre viewed from the northeast. The temple complex so far is just hovering over the river with no real support, but no real building to support either. The north bridge can be viewed in the distance.

The pyramid of Khufu was meant to be the grandest of the three pyramids. Sadly, the sloped design for the pyramid of Khafre failed and I had to make the two of them identical. However, its plazas and satellite structures please me immensely, and I find the entire area beautiful. The mortuary temple is very similar to Menkaure’s, but with the addition of two obelisks. The road leading from Khufu and past Khafre is lined with lush palm trees. The placement of the sphinx unfortunately blocked any sort of causeway this pyramid should have had, though I may end up adding one if the stubborn sphinx doesn’t start behaving and I’m forced to level it. I will also likely build some sort of plaza or temple to the north of Khufu. The view of Khufu from halfway up the slope of Khafre, as well as another view of Menkaure’s temple and the butt of the stubborn sphinx in the far left. The view of Khufu’s plaza from the sphinx’s back. My nearest neighbor’s gravity defying house can be seen past Khafre to the north. We jokingly refer to him as the Hittites.